


Intolerable

by ceywoozle



Category: Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
Genre: Darcy POV, F/M, Retelling, there's a cat sorry
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-24
Updated: 2016-11-05
Packaged: 2018-08-24 12:38:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8372551
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceywoozle/pseuds/ceywoozle
Summary: A retelling of Pride and Prejudice from Darcy's POV. Beginning at the beginning.





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> i know this has been done a thousand times already but i don't really care. also, cats.

When Fitzwilliam Darcy entered this world, he was red-faced and squalling and covered in mucus. In fact, he was much as any other baby, emerging from his mother's womb with vociferous protest and the hideous-beauty of the every day miracle of new birth. The young mid-wife, perhaps startled by the very ordinariness of this latest member of an unordinary family, nearly dropped him, but by a last momentary deftness of hand managed to keep him from falling to that most noble of floors, holding him in somewhat shaking hands while the mother panted and wept with relief at the ending of an ordeal among the bloodied sheets.

It was not to be expected, however, that this ordinariness should remain. The moment the screaming, slimy creature had been cleansed and quieted and with proper ceremony deposited amongst the folds of the softest linen money could buy, nobly enclosed by the four hand-carved wooden walls that had protected the past ten generations of Darcys in just such situations as this, it was made clear that Fitzwilliam Darcy was not, in fact, an ordinary child.

Indeed, how could he be? Cousin of earls, latest and now dearest of one of the oldest Norman bloodlines of most noble England, it was perhaps to be expected that the floral crown carved into the head of the venerable cradle should be considered more than merely decorative. The Darcys had, as the saying went, come over with the Conqueror, and like the Conqueror, had prospered. Thirty-two generations had come and gone, had sown their seeds and reaped their crops among the soil of their new land, putting down roots nourished in blood and making it home, until land and blood had become one, feeding each other and making one another great. Thirty-two generations of fiefdoms conferred and rewarded, of the honourable rights of noblesse oblige, and the blood of this land had become their own, hard fought and won. It wasn't to be expected, after all this, that Fitzwilliam Darcy would be an ordinary child.

Nor could it be imagined that even the Earl of Matlock, gazing down upon this newest grandson, would not feel the phantom call of previous generations with something very near to awe. This latest incumbent of their hope, sated and spent with mother's milk and the ordeal of its birth, was as precious to him as his first son's son, further proof of their favour by God if any were needed. He lay a finger against the sleeping infant's flushed and downy cheek and blessed it with a fervent prayer of thanks.

It would, perhaps, have been better had he laid a similar hand to his daughter's cheek. Anne Darcy, who had once been Anne Fitzwilliam, daughter of an Earl, now wife of a Darcy, had never been robust. She had been famed indeed for the pale delicacy of her ethereal beauty, and the bearing of a child had turned her from delicate to frail. It was fortunate that though she did not have the robustness of her sister and her brother, she at least shared their stubborn pride. Not for Anne Darcy to die before allocating to her lord's treasury the requisite heir and spare. She rallied, but only just, wheezing her way back to the world of the living where she remained for eleven more years, only forfeiting her place at the very last when, gasping for breath, she had delivered unto her lord that final evidence of a sworn duty performed. 

She was not to know that, in the end, she had failed. The child, that so hoped for spare, was a girl. Anne Darcy breathed her last at the very moment when little George, who in actuality proved to be no more than a little Georgiana, breathed her very first.

Even more precious now was little Fitzwilliam, a solemn and serious child of eleven, looking down on this hoped for brother and finding instead a tiny, wrinkled creature, no more beautiful than he had been at that age, still encrusted with the evidence of its passage from its mother's womb. Little Georgiana was almost forgotten in the house's sudden loss of its lady, but Fitzwilliam, mindful of his duty to lesser things, ensured that this wrinkled, dirty thing was properly covered by the same soft soft linen that had once covered him, ensconced safely within the same carved wooden walls that had eleven years earlier kept him safe.

But not this time an Earl's fond face looking down, an old man's noble blessing on the fretful infant's encoated cheek. Not this time the proud hope of two great houses. This time, merely a girl. A child to one day be bartered away for great things, perhaps, but for the moment little more than the cause of her mother's demise, a reminder of that lady's failure. The Earl, sickly himself now, presided over his daughter's deathbed, the child's father at his side; two strong men lamenting the necessary trading of one daughter for another.

In the meantime, this new daughter, named for a father who had yet to see her, opened blue and bleary eyes and for the first time looked upon the world into which she had been thrust. A face, young and strong and solemn, looked down upon her. Not a mother, perhaps, but a brother, and Fitzwilliam Darcy, who had, in his eleven years of life, duly admired his mother and with thoughtful propriety respected his father, suddenly understood that there were other feelings in this world that one could attach to family: love.

Not that fond, condescending sort of love he felt for Fratters, his nurse, nor the somewhat frightened admiration he gifted to Hobbs, the head groom who had put him upon his first pony, but something more akin to that first bloom of protective fierceness he had felt when he had found the stable boys by the river with their weighted sack and he had fought them off with the same stubborn bloody-mindedness that had allowed his mother to gasp her way through a further eleven years of life. He had saved that pathetic sack in the end, but only one of the four small lives within it had passed unscathed through its ordeal. The other three he had left in the forest, food for the beasts there that also needed to eat, whose descendants would one day be within his care. The last one, the fourth, he had taken to the nursery where he had defied all commands to rid himself of it. He had lain awake for a week, fearing that either nature or some command of his father would see it taken away from him while he slept, and so through determination he had saved it. He named it MacDuff, for the sake of that other brindled cat that had thrice mewed, and even now, when MacDuff was a graceful female of two and half, she was most often found draped across the Young Master Fitzwilliam's sturdy shoulders, purring with smug self-satisfaction into that attentive ear.

Even now, in that very moment, as the boy peered doubtfully at his new sibling, the cat prowled around the legs of that same venerable wooden cradle. Even as her best friend looked within and rediscovered within himself that same fierce protective love he had felt upon opening that sodden sack and had heard the thankful sound of the soon-to-be-MacDuff's pathetic wailing cry, the cat purred with mysterious satisfaction at his feet. And as little Georgiana Darcy opened her eyes for the first time, young Fitzwilliam reached down and with a careful finger touched this latest vessel of his affection and in a voice no less fervent than his grandfather's had been on such a similar occasion, Fitzwilliam said, “Don't worry, Georgie. MacDuff and I shall look after you.”

And MacDuff, sensing the importance of this moment, mewed.


	2. II

Darcy was twelve and almost-three-quarters when he was first thrust into the companionship of George Wickham. He had always been aware of the steward's boy, raised on the periphery of his own upbringing, but being a whole two years and eleven days younger than himself, Darcy hadn't paid much attention to him, rendered unimportant by the relative difference of age and station and also held aloof by a certain suspicion that the other boy was somehow always laughing at him.

Georgiana, at the time, was ill, and though she had been weaned through a dozen such illnesses in her short life time, this was the first time Fitzwilliam had been unequivocally barred from her room. He was restless and worried and for the first time in his life, felt utterly helpless. He spent two days pacing the halls of the nursery from which he had been banished, an early release from those constricting rooms that did nothing to appease him, and had finally been banished from the house altogether by a Fratters whose patience was worn even thinner than his own.

So he paced the gardens instead, wandering aimlessly from flower garden to orchard to wilderness, not much caring where he was going. MacDuff, unhappy with his inattention, had left him an hour before to find her own comfort in a spot of sun. Darcy, being merely twelve and almost-three-quarters, viewed this as the betrayal it was.

It was in this mood, abandoned and banished and helpless, that Young Master Fitzwilliam found himself beside the stream, following its length and remembering those three small souls he hadn't been in time to save all those years ago. When traversing one particularly leafy stretch, he suddenly became aware of the sound of raised voices, and that particular time already raised in his memory, it took barely a moment for him to recognise the particular tones of the same stable boys he had rousted all those years ago when he had saved MacDuff from her fate. He broke into a run, following the stream around a final bend, and came across a scene that struck outrage into his young and tortured heart. Those self-same stable boys, now older and considerably larger than he, were kicking the huddled form of a smaller boy, curled into a ball on the ground at their feet.

Without even a thought to consider the wisdom of his actions, Fitzwilliam Darcy, descendant of conquerors, ran fists flailing into the centre of the fray.

There was a moment in which the issue might have been in question, but in the end Fitzwilliam was saved by that very same bloodline: recognising their master's treasured son, the more numerous and far brawnier stable boys ran rather than risk a strapping for drawing that illustrious cork. Fitzwilliam, having gotten enough hits on their retreating backs to satisfy his sense of righteousness, now turned, panting, to the huddled form on the ground.

At the age of ten and three-quarters, little George Wickham was an unprepossessing specimen. When Fitzwilliam came to his rescue on that day, an already unexciting face was made especially hideous by the addition of a bloody nose and an eye already beginning to swell shut. A long, shallow cut adorned one unattractively lean cheek where a branch had slashed him in his headlong flight from his tormentors, and this in addition to a drawn cork gave his thin and unhealthy face a rather gruesome appearance.

Undeterred by this, George Wickham, uncurling himself from his protective sphere, favoured his saviour with a newly gap-toothed grin. “Hullo, Fitz,” he said with undiminished cheer. “Much obliged.”

“Don't call me Fitz,” Young Master Fitzwilliam, descendant of conquerors said with stately dignity, ruined slightly by his flushed countenance and still heaving breast. “What have you done now, George?”

“Oh, I like that,” George said, picking himself up off the ground and carefully brushing a considerable amount of forest and stream bank from his clothes. “Who's to say I did anything? They were the ones attacking me.”

Suddenly recalling his father's strictures on being kind to those beneath one, in combination with an inability to think of a witty reply, led Fitzwilliam to merely nod in tacit apology. “What happened?” he asked instead.

“Why nothing! At least not on my part. I was merely on my way to see your father.”

Suspicion made Fitzwilliam abruptly forget his manners. “Why?”

George shrugged. “Don't know, do I? I suspect it's so he can tell me how he likes me better than you. How should you feel about being disowned, Fitz?”

“Don't call me Fitz. And don't be stupid. He can't disown me, it's not allowed.”

George gave him a look, like he was missing the point. “I suspect he could if he really wanted to,” the smaller boy said slowly. His face was serious and Fitzwilliam, who had never been given opportunity to cultivate what little humour he had been born with, missed the rather mocking twinkle in George Wickham's bright eye. He swelled with wrathful indignation that anyone should ever accuse his father of such impropriety or suggest he would ever act in such a way that would incite the lower orders to gossip.

“You forget yourself,” Young Master Fitzwilliam intoned in just such a way as his father had once berated him, when he had found him hobnobbing in the kitchen with a scullery maid in the middle of the night when he'd sneaked out of his bed in search of something to eat.

George Wickham looked suitably impressed. “That's good,” he said. “You sound just like him when you do that.” And with a sudden cackle of laughter he skipped suddenly away, back towards the house.

It was a mixture of scepticism and jealousy that sent Fitzwilliam after him. He couldn't remember the last time his father had sent for him and part of him was sure George Wickham was making the whole thing up just to annoy him, which was just the sort of thing George Wickham would do, he thought. He followed at a distance, being careful not to be seen running, as that was improper, especially with Georgiana so ill, but having to restrain himself from doing so nonetheless. It was difficult sometimes, he thought, being Fitzwilliam Darcy. How much easier it must be to be a George Wickham, who clearly held no compunction against running or even skipping or even—yes, he could hear the faint strains borne back to him on the breeze—whistling.

He lost sight of George by the time he reached the house, but assuming he had disappeared into the lower part of the house to clean himself up before presenting himself to the master of the house, Fitzwilliam, with the view of beating George to his father's study, hurried on ahead of him with a certain smug triumph.

He was brought up short when, arriving at these august portals, he found himself beaten not only by little George Wickham, but by Mr Wickham as well, Pemberley's steward. He was an upright man, smiling more than solemn, though lately Fitzwilliam had become aware of the same rather distracted quality about him that characterised his own father since Fitzwilliam's mother had died. That distracted air was there now, along with fearful disapproval as he crouched before his son's smeared and bloodied countenance. Little George Wickham stood stooped and pathetic looking, snivelling in a way he hadn't been when Fitzwilliam had first saved him from his tormentors, while Mr Wickham tenderly sponged that disreputable face.

Fitzwilliam's own father was watching this display with the same expression he sometimes got when he came into the nursery after Fitzwilliam and Georgiana were supposed to be asleep. More than once Fitzwilliam had lain quietly breathing in the shadows of his blankets while the small lantern by the door had illuminated the master's face as he looked upon the forms of his sleeping children. It was this same look Fitzwilliam saw now, and for the first time it occurred to him that he had never seen this look directed at him while he was awake.

“Fitzwilliam, there you are,” Mr Darcy said, and with the blink of an eye that odd expression was gone, to be replaced by the usual air of not having slept long enough. “I've had people searching for you for over an hour now, and here you finally arrive with rumpled cravat and dirty hands. Is this how you behave when your sister is so ill?”

Fitzwilliam, torn between a sense of injustice when George Wickham stood before him, twenty time as unkempt as he, and of deep shame, because how could he have forgotten Georgiana, could only attempt to straighten his spine even further. “No, sir.”

It was for little George to say something, to make exculpation for Fitzwilliam's sorry state, and with some sense of indignation Fitzwilliam waited while George stood there accepting the steward's embarrassingly sentimental care and said nothing. He felt the hot wrath of indignation creep up inside him and with excusable lack of manners said, “I was helping George.”

All eyes turned towards this culprit, who seemed to further wilt under this scrutiny.

“Lad?” Mr Wickham said questioningly and that pathetic head, bowed before him, gave a nod.

“Yes, Da. Fitz helped me.”

Fitzwilliam, surprised by this candour, glowed with deserved pride. He had routed four strong stable lads after all, all by himself, while George cowered on the ground. He stood up straighter and turn his nose up in the same way he had seen the Earl do on occasion. His father, turning to find him in this pose, very nearly smiled.

“I am proud of you,” he said, and Fitzwilliam felt himself swell even further. “But it does not do to boast. A gentleman must always let his actions speak for themselves. Words of praise mean nothing if they are not freely given.”

Standing before his father, gently scolded for not being a gentleman, Fitzwilliam felt all his former pride deflate in a rush, leaving him feeling as wilted as George Wickham looked.

“However,” his father said, “I am pleased the two of you are already such good friends. It's on this subject that Mr Wickham and I wished to speak with you both today. The Michaelmas term at Eton begins in two weeks, and after some deliberation I have decided that young George will accompany you, Fitzwilliam. He is a little young, perhaps, but I feel it will be helpful to you both to have a friend nearby.”

For Fitzwilliam, the words 'Eton' and 'Michaelmas term' fell on surprised ears. Michaelmas term? Was he meant to go to school? Now? While Georgiana was so ill and the household had barely come out of mourning for his mother, not even two years dead? Was it because he had boasted in such an ungentlemanlike manner that his father was sending him away?

“But father—”

A glance cut him off. “You forget yourself,” George Darcy said. “You will be thirteen in January, Fitzwilliam. It is time to leave the nursery behind.”

The nursery? When he'd already been banished because of Georgiana's illness? He saw no reason why he couldn't leave the nursery without leaving Pemberley. The house was enormous. If there really wasn't room he could stay in the porter's cottage with Dowling, or the dower house. Anything. Anywhere. But leave Pemberley? Fitzwilliam had never been anywhere else apart from Matlock House every Christmas and Rosings every Easter. But only for two weeks and then he always knew he'd come back here, back home where everything he knew was, where everything he loved...

“But what about MacDuff?” he suddenly blurted.

The silent disappointment in the look his father levelled at him was worse than being shouted at.

Fitzwilliam subsided, but in his heart he rebelled, and after only a few more brief sentences when he was dismissed, he merely bowed and left the room without a word, wishing he'd never been summoned by his father, after all.

MacDuff, when he found her, was sunning herself on the stone patio that led from the yellow drawing room to the rose garden. She rose and stretched when she saw him, mewing a greeting when he scooped her up and pressed his face into her fur. He felt her purrs, reverberating against his ear, and wondered what he was going to do.

It was here, ten minutes later, that George Wickham found him, his face rubbed white again by his father's ministrations. He was grinning again, the tears and bowed shoulders cheerfully banished.

“This is smashing!” he said. “Your da's going to buy me new togs. I told you he liked me better.” And with a mocking laugh he took off skipping towards the orchards.

 


	3. III

The two boys were packed away, stowed amongst their luggage like so much lumber. George, his clothes newly purchased by Darcy's own father, was a pale huddled figure, struggling gamely to overcome the travelling cases, blankets, and warm bricks deemed necessary to transport two small boys two hundred miles in early September. Fitzwilliam, less crowded on the forward facing bench, sat wordless, staring at the spot above the smaller boy's left shoulder, trying to pretend he was anywhere else. Anywhere in Pemberley with MacDuff wrapped around his shoulders instead of tearfully clutched to Fratters' bosom where she mewled questioningly as her best friend slowly rolled away.

He trusted Fratters, of course. She had promised to look after the little brindled cat, but Darcy knew that Fratters was still only a servant and MacDuff was still only a cat and a word to the contrary from his father would have to be heeded. He hadn't slept the night before, thinking of weighted sacks, his father standing above the stream, MacDuff limp and sodden in his grasp.

It was absurd, of course. He knew that the worst that was likely to happen was MacDuff would be banished to the stables where she would live a high life on endless mice and warm straw. And it was absurd because he was Fitzwilliam Darcy and MacDuff, beloved as she was, was only a cat, and Darcys belonged at Eton whereas cats did not. Fitzwilliam had known this, even if his father hadn't paid an unprecedented visit to the nursery the night before to inform him of this fact. He had sat in the low rocking chair that Fratters always used when trying to coax Georgiana to sleep, and for the first time Fitzwilliam had had a view of his father that wasn't from below, his face on level with his own, his expression demanding his attention as an equal.

“Fitzwilliam,” he had said, “It's time for you to grow up and recognise your place in this world. I have kept you sheltered here, perhaps wrongly, but the world is not Pemberley and soon you will have to learn that. You will be among the people who will surround you for the rest of your life. You know how to behave, I'm not afraid for you, but remember your place. Give proper deference to those above you and show proper condescension towards those below. George Wickham is, of course, among these, but he is also my godson, and as such, you owe him your protection and the feelings of a brother. Watch him for me, for he hasn't the strength or position that you have, but he's a good boy. Be kind to him.”

Fitzwilliam did not know how to love someone as a brother, especially not one such as George Wickham whose greatest delight seemed to be in making Fitzwilliam uncomfortable, but he knew he would try because it was expected. He understood an obligation when it was presented to him, and he had nodded and dutifully told his father that he would.

George Darcy had unfolded himself to his proper height and with a last pat to his son's dark head, he had left the nursery, a bowed and defeated figure in the dark.

Fitzwilliam hadn't slept after that. Couldn't, for the thought of George Wickham as a brother and MacDuff tied in a sodden sack had kept him awake. When he heard the tiny tin chime of the nursery clock count twelve, he slipped from his bed and went silently out of the room. His bare feet had made no noise on the floor, but it needn't have concerned him, for the candles were still lit in the sconces and on the main floor the sound of voices echoed through the marble hall.

Fitzwilliam had followed them, recognising his father's voice raised in unfamiliar agitation, a tone he'd never heard used in front of him before, and next to it the familiar rumble of his uncle, the Earl of Matlock.

“Well, George,” Uncle Matlock had said.

“Not now, Edward,” his father had snapped, an impatience and irritability in his tone that Fitzwilliam had never heard from him before.

“You can't keep him cooped up here forever. You're worse than Kitty with that girl of hers.”

“Little Anne is sickly.”

Uncle Matlock snorted. “Anne is always sickly. She needs to build up her strength, not be kept wrapped in cotton wool her whole life.”

“If I recall correctly, that was your advice for my Annie, as well.”

“And look where she is.”

“I promise you, Matlock—” George Darcy had snarled, and in the corridor, his toes curled up against the freezing marble floor, Fitzwilliam had shivered.

“Ease off, old man! I apologise. That was out of order.”

“You're damned right.”

There was silence, the clink of glasses. Uncle Matlock coughed and Fitzwilliam, unable to see through the angle of the cracked door, wished he could see his father's face.

“I am right in this, however,” Uncle Edward had said then.

There was another pause and Fitzwilliam found himself holding his breath, waiting for the answer. When it came, he barely heard it, his father's voice muffled, almost petulant. “It's not safe.”

“Nowhere is safe if the French ever manage to land. But they won't. Look at Ireland. Even when they managed it their own incompetence was against them.”

“And what of the mutiny at Nore? That was barely three months ago and it's not twenty-five miles from Eton. The seditionists are everywhere.”

“Don't be an old woman, for Heaven's sake, George. Do you really think the revolutionaries shall go recruiting at Eton?”

“Don't mock me, Edward. I'm not imagining this,” his father snaps.

There had been another silence, tense and irritable, and Fitzwilliam had heard the heavy shuffle of his father pacing along the library carpet. And when he had spoken again it was in a tone that Fitzwilliam recognised, one he had come to know so well, quiet and prevalent in that familiar voice: defeat, exhaustion.

“I'm frightened, Edward.”

“Then remove to the London house while the boy is in school.”

“And what of the Jamaican plantations? I leave in a fortnight. With the Bank Restrictions I dare not risk any trouble at the Jamaican properties.”

There was the rush of expelled breath and Uncle Edward's voice, tired and exasperated, “What would you do, George? What would you have any of us do? Hide in our attics and priest holes until the world either ends or every Frenchman and revolutionary is vanquished?”

“That's not what I'm saying.”

“Go to Jamaica. Send the boys to school. I have my eye on them, you know I do. My Henry is already there and Richard will be going up as soon as I can convince his mother to loosen the apron strings. He already wants to be a soldier, little rascal.”

“You'll be mad to let him.”

“Nonsense. He'll make a fine soldier. No Fitzwilliam has made a clergyman yet. You're getting soft, old man.”

“Perhaps. I don't like being so far away. Not now. Listen, Edward, if something happens to me—”

“Enough! I won't hear this! By God, man, you're starting to sound like my wife. Take your example from our Kitty instead. She sent Sir Lewis off with a kiss and wave and not a tear did she shed when he didn't come back again. Englishwomen like her are why this country still stands. She knows her duty and so should you.”

“You make me feel like a blasted coward.”

“You're not. Just a little rattled. As we all are right now. Go to Jamaica, George. Send your boy off to where he belongs. He'll have Henry to show him the ropes and old Wickham's boy to keep him from getting lonely. I know you worry about him, but he'll pluck up, same as any youngster let loose among his kind. He's been too much at home, that's all. He'll be fine.”

“You're right, of course. And besides, there isn't anything else I can do. I _must_ go to Jamaica, Edward! Those blasted abolitionists.”

“Come, another glass of that excellent brandy and then to bed.”

“You'll stay the night?”

“I shall, so long as you lend me your valet.”

“Of course. I'll send Broussard to you first.”

“Good man. Come. Your glass, George.”

Fitzwilliam had slipped away then, silent on feet gone numb with cold. Once again, ensconced in his own bed, he had lain staring at the ceiling with MacDuff curled purring around his head. He thought of the things he had heard, and though he hadn't understood them, he had managed to pick up on one important fact: everyone had lied.

From the first time his father had perched him on his saddlebow and later took him trotting beside him on his own pony, his quiet voice a constant companion as he pointed out to a fascinated Fitzwilliam every field of Pemberley, every cottage and kiln, every farmer and labourer. He'd told him names, taught him to remember them. He'd shown him how to tell when thatch needed replacing and a tenant child needed to be fed, how to spot the first signs of neglect and trouble at a cottage and when a field needed to lie fallow and when it needed to be planted and with what. He'd taught him when to show mercy and after that he'd taught him how to be hard. 

Fitzwilliam had thought that as long as one remembered these things, as long as one kept Pemberley and all its inhabitants and dependants safe, then everything would be well. Nothing would touch them. The world would go on and a Darcy would stride these fields, sit at this table, dispense mercy and judgement and help till this land until...until forever. Because Fitzwilliam hadn't learnt yet that the world could end. That what he did, what his descendants might do, might not make a difference at all.

Now, the next morning, sitting in a carriage and surrounded by everything that was deemed necessary to begin a new life somewhere else, Fitzwilliam tried to think of something comforting to say to George Wickham and failed.

He need not have bothered.

“This is smashing,” George said. “Did you see my new togs? I wonder if I'll be allowed to sport them at Eton.”

For a moment, Fitzwilliam struggled manfully, then gave up. “We have uniforms,” he said.

“Yes, but on Sundays, maybe.”

“The uniforms are for Sunday, as well.”

“Well, I'm going to find some time to wear them. I think they're just smashing, don't you?”

Fitzwilliam, who had spent his whole life going from one expensive suit of clothes to another, tried to think of something nice to say about the rather plain set of nankeen breeches and cotton shirt and short coat, but couldn't. They seemed utterly ordinary to him.

George, seeing the doubt in his companion's face, turned sullen. “I like them,” he said emphatically and unnecessarily. “Anyway, what's wrong with them?”

“Nothing,” Fitzwilliam said truthfully. “They're fine.”

Damned with faint praise, George flushed. “You're a prig, Fitz.”

It was Fitzwilliam's turn to flush, but he remembered his father's words and held his tongue. “Don't be common,” he said instead, a phrase he'd heard his father say to his Uncle Matlock once.

“Why not?” George retorted. “I am, aren't I?”

Fitzwilliam was puzzled. This was undoubtedly true. “Yes,” he agreed. “But you needn't act it.”

George snorted a laugh but didn't look amused. “You're a prig,” he said again, and with the repeat of this insult the two boys fell into a silence that lasted most of their journey south.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> to clarify, the "kitty" mentioned is fitz's aunt lady catherine de bourgh. (kitty is a diminutive of the name catherine and i take great joy in thinking how much she would hate it and how much her brother would love annoying her by using it.) "little anne" in that case is clearly anne de bourgh, her perpetually sickly daughter.
> 
> the conversation between george darcy and the earl of matlock is meant to be somewhat obscure. little fitzwilliam is only meant to come away with a sense of safety lost and so the details aren't meant to be important.
> 
> however, should you desire elucidation (and because i did all the research and love to talk):
> 
> the main part of the story, when fitzwilliam darcy meets elizabeth bennet, will be september of 1811, when he is twenty-seven years old. as such, this portion of the story takes place in the last few years of the 18th century when the latter half of the french revolution is still going strong and napoleon bonaparte is still only starting to flex his considerable wings. the coup of 18 fructidor of the year V of the new french republic (4 september 1797 to everyone else) has just seen the last royalist influence ejected from the french government and thousands of french émigrés are still flooding into england to escape the war back home, almost all of them destitute. families like the darcys and the fitzwilliams would most likely be strictly anti-revolutionary, in case that wasn't obvious. the french revolution was about equalising the social classes, something that clearly wouldn't appeal to the average english peer and landed gentry. while it would be nice to imagine fitzwilliam darcy as a socialist, i find that realism gets rather too firmly in the way. the most i can give him is that perhaps the darcys are whigs.
> 
> eton is eton college, the private boarding school that george darcy is sending fitzwilliam and george wickham to. 
> 
> the reference to the french landing in ireland is the initial failed landing of french troops near bantry bay in december of 1796 under general hoche. the failure was due to indecision among the fleet leaders, as well as bad seamanship and rather unlucky weather. in february of 1797, however, as part of the same planned attack to join the irish rebellion, a small force under the command of an american named tate managed to effect a landing at fishguard. however, due to really terrible discipline among the landing party, they were routed and forced to surrender two days later without any significant action being joined.
> 
> the mutiny at nore was the second major mutiny to occur in that period. the first one was at spithead by portsmouth and ended with concessions from the royal navy as it related more to pay and working conditions. the mutiny at nore, however, ended with the mutineers demanding the dissolution of the british parliament and demand for immediate peace with france. the taken ships actually blockaded london which lost them a lot of popular opinion as it prevented merchant ships from entering the port. the mutiny lost more and more ships as the days progressed and when the mutineers were denied food and water and the lead ship hoisted the flag to sail for france, all the remaining ships abandoned it. the mutiny failed and the leader was hanged.
> 
> the jamaican plantation is as it sounds. rich men got richer by investing in things that made them money. it wasn't unusual for the wealthy to have some foreign property interests and at that time slavery was the norm. it wasn't until 1833 that slavery was abolished throughout the british empire.
> 
> the bank restrictions act happened in february 1797. it was the first time printed notes couldn't be matched by gold bullion, and after the almost invasion at fishguard, people started to panic and wanted to trade in all their notes. in response, the government put a hold on all gold bullion, an act they renewed every year until 1821. the result of this, however, was a whole lot of forgery happening. the lower denominations being printed were of rather bad quality making it very easy to forge. in response, the government passed anti-forgery laws that made no distinction between actually forging notes and accepting forged notes, even innocently. the penalty for handling forged notes in any capacity was execution or transportation.
> 
> also, yes, george and edward are drinking french brandy. terrible, i know.
> 
> also, I don't intend to make this story hugely political. austen wrote in a very small universe which is a very large part of her appeal. however, I do like to add some context, and for an extremely wealthy gentleman with a huge income and a large estate, the world would of necessity have been much larger than it would have been for the bennets.


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